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Nature breaks up Iraqi toxic trail

Soil in areas of northeastern Iraq where Saddam Hussein’s army attacked
the Kurds with chemical weapons is now free from all traces of mustard gas
and nerve agents. The unpublished research is good news for Kurdish farmers
who have returned to their land since the Gulf War, but bad news for scientists
who want to uncover where chemical weapons have been used.

During 1988, the Iraqi army used chemical weapons against Kurdish villagers
and farmers in an attempt to destroy support for rebels operating in the
countryside. In one attack alone, on the town of Halabja, an estimated 5000
people were killed.

Soil and blood samples taken around the time of the attacks confirmed
that mustard gas had been used. After the Gulf War ceasefire, UN inspectors
found that Iraq had huge stocks of mustard gas and the nerve agents tabun
and sarin.

On a trip to Iraq last autumn, Dlawer Ala’Aldeen, a microbiologist from
the Queen’s Medical Centre in Nottingham and secretary of the London-based
Kurdish Scientific and Medical Association, took soil samples from Halabja
and two other sites of chemical weapons attacks.

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Tests carried out by scientists from the Chemical and Biological Defence
Establishment in Porton Down, Wiltshire, proved negative for tabun, sarin,
mustard gas and their breakdown products.

It is not surprising that all traces of the nerve agents had disappeared,
says Alastair Hay, senior lecturer in chemical pathology at the University
of Leeds. When exposed to the elements, these gases break down in hours
or days. However, no one has performed conclusive tests on the persistence
of mustard gas.

‘Everybody would have liked a positive result just to show that if people
use chemical weapons you could still detect them in soil samples years later,’
he says.

For Kurdish farmers the findings are good news, says Ala’Aldeen. People
in the poisoned areas worry that residues of the gases cause headaches and
malaise, and stunt the growth of plants. ‘We can say almost for definite
that these complaints can’t be attributed to gas,’ he says.